The Mountain of Light

by Indu Sundaresan

  Through the dense hush came the low melody of a song. A girl came into the courtyard from the south, through the archways that led into the Diwan-i-am, and flitted down the steps, two kid goats following her, their bleats insistent, their long ears flapping. She moved gently across the stone, the skirts of her ghagara swishing, the moonlight picking out the sparkle of a hundred diamonds strewn over her clothing. She wore a veil, also studded with diamonds, but it only covered her head to her hairline and then flowed behind her like a glittering cloud. The goats leapt at the bushes and began nibbling, the girl sang on. Henry strained to hear the words—in Persian—and he caught “my lover,” “in the light of the moon,” “a meeting,” “a parting,” and wondered if he had heard it before.

  The cool whites of a rath-ki-rani bush’s flowers covered the southwestern end of the courtyard, and the girl raked in the blooms with one hand and filled a basket hanging by her side. She shooed the goats away. “Go chew on something else, something useless.” They bounced around, as though they understood what she was saying.

  On the platform, in the middle of the courtyard’s pool, Henry sat perfectly still, mesmerized. Who was she? Where had she come from? She had to be one of the Maharajah’s entourage, but she was too young to have been Ranjit Singh’s wife, surely?

  The girl turned then and saw Henry. The moon was now high in the sky, a small pearl among the stars, nothing like its early, immense self, and drenched them all with a silver light that was as clear as a vivid day. From where he sat, Henry could see the girl’s face, the consternation upon it, the lovely mouth opening in an “oh.” She set down her basket, unhurriedly, and just as deliberately put up her hands to frame her face. It was a pantomime of surprise, and Henry felt mirth bubble up in him.

  He rose, and as he did, a door opened on the western end of the courtyard and a man came through, an oil lantern held out in front of him, its loop of golden light reaching only up his arm and no further. “Pat?”

  Henry waited a long moment until his brother John’s eyes adjusted to the pale light in the courtyard and found him. “I’m here, John,” he said resignedly. “On the platform.”

  “What are you doing there? It’s time for bed. All good residents need their night’s sleep.” John Lawrence’s boots smacked loudly on the pathway. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry watched the girl melt into the shadows of the building on the south; the two goats had long skipped to her side, but the basket lay in the moonlight, and from where he stood, Henry could smell the heady fragrance of the flowers.

  “Come,” John said. He turned his head, as did Henry, when the girl vanished beyond the arches, the diamonds on her veil giving off a flash of dull glitter, one bell in her anklets, not muffled by her skirts, ringing a sharp, clear note. “Who’s that?”

  “No one. I don’t know who.”

  John frowned. “The women of the zenana are not allowed here. They’re to keep to their quarters—they have enough space as it is . . . why can’t they stay there? I’ll send an order out tomorrow.”

  “No such thing,” Henry said, as the two men walked back toward their quarters and through the door that John had come from, which led to the original Diwan-i-khas, the Hall of Private Audience, of the Mughal Emperors. Also called Shah Jahan’s Quadrangle. “They have a right to it all; we’re the usurpers here, John.”

  “You think so?” John halted and held the lantern up to the face of his brother, older than he by five years. When he met Henry’s determined gaze, he shook his head. “You do think so, you’ve always thought so.” He grinned. “Father destined me for the Civil Service and you for the army, Pat, well, you and George and Alexander. At one time I burned for it too, but Papa would not agree, and I think he was right after all. And yet, you are the one with the soft heart.”

  “I care for the people, John,” Henry said hesitantly, knowing he sounded pompous. He was a mere captain in the army, and had not risen much beyond this rank because most of his other duties, ones he had taken on—which could be loosely termed as those of a civil servant, John’s in fact—had kept him from regular promotions. As a result, Resident of Lahore or not, John’s salary far exceeded Henry’s, even though John had only joined Indian service five years after Henry.

  “So do I,” said John, quickly, hotly.

  “I know.” Henry put his arm around his brother’s shoulders as they moved on. John had the soldier’s heart, the conquering warrior’s heart, and Henry had the one that should have been given to an administrator. John’s motives for conquest were pure, well intentioned, but the brothers had never been able to agree on the direction these intentions should take. Henry did not think—had never thought—that the Punjab should be annexed. John had always believed so. Because he thought that the British were best-suited to rule over a fragmented kingdom; the native kings had no order, no method, no real love for taxes, revenues, wide streets, and social justice that kept a people happy and prosperous.

  If Dalhousie came to India as Governor-General—when he came—he would choose John as his representative in the Punjab, and send Henry away elsewhere.

  They entered the courtyard of the Diwan-i-khas, and it was now just before dinnertime. Oil lamps and lanterns were scattered on the edges of the pathways, lighting up their way; a table had been set in the pavilion—where once a mighty Mughal Emperor had given audience to a select few nobles, a party of British men sat down to eat on rough-hewn chairs with a bench-like table. Their candlesticks were beer bottles, candles stuck into the openings, wax piling down the thick, brown glass. The men talked, they ate, they drank some more beer, and the bottles were carefully stored away by the servants to help light up other dark nights.

  Their cots were laid out in the center of the courtyard, makeshift army beds of strung and knitted jute that sagged as it took their weight; cool, cotton sheets on top, bags of hay for pillows. Feather-stuffed pillows, as back home, they had discovered, were breeding houses for lice and other vermin. The hay was thrown out, or dried in the hot sun every morning before being stuffed into a pillowcase at night.

  Tomorrow, Henry thought, as he closed his eyes, he had the unlovely duty of going through the items in Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s Toshakhana—the treasury house. But, along with other distasteful duties, this one had to be done. A list of jewels and precious stones from Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s Toshakhana had come by dak a few days ago from the Governor-General, Sir Henry Hardinge, in Calcutta.

  That list had been compiled meticulously over the last thirty years, long before the British were considering annexing the Punjab. It was just a matter of routine, of protocol—this cataloging of native wealth. For you never knew when the raja might fall ill, die, or ask for aid from the East India Company, and when the time came for the Company to give its help—in whatever form—it wanted to know what treasures were hidden in that kingdom. In other words, just how much help to give.

  Since the 1809 Treaty of Amritsar with Maharajah Ranjit Singh, there had been some scattered British presence in the Punjab—a secretary of the Governor-General’s come to visit, a soldier, a commander in chief, and each had been shown some part of the vast wealth of the Maharajah, and each had documented what he saw. And sent these secret notes back to Calcutta. That he had been immensely wealthy had not been in doubt, because Ranjit Singh had also been ridiculously generous to everyone who visited. They had all returned burdened with cashmere shawls of immense value; pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies set in every kind of jewelry imaginable; carriages, carts, fans, silks, and horses of such upstanding pedigree and paces that they had put their English Thoroughbreds to shame.

  If the Maharajah could give away so much, how much more would he have had in his coffers? The British were determined to find out, and so Henry had to begin sorting through the Toshakhana.

  When he finally slept, though, he did not dream of the jewels; he dreamed instead of a girl under a veil of diamonds who had mocked him. And then disappeared into the night.

  • �
� •

  The next morning, Henry went west along the public spaces of the fort, skirting Maharani Jindan Kaur’s quarters—the zenana apartments that he had left untouched to their original occupants. In the last two months, he had met the indomitable mother of Maharajah Dalip Singh some ten times, and each meeting had ended with her making demands, and his trying to ward them off as best he could. Among his many duties, he had had to add that of a diplomat, one with the silkiest tongue, which wagged much but said nothing of any avail. It didn’t deter the young Maharani, though; when she couldn’t meet Henry herself, she sent her lover, Lal Singh, whom she had insisted upon making wazir of the Sikh Empire.

  After the First Anglo-Sikh War, into which Maharani Jindan Kaur had brought the British herself, asking for their help in setting her son on the throne, the concept of a Punjab Empire was laughable. It did exist, but whittled away at the borders. The British had demanded, and got, Jalandar Doab, the land between the Sutlej and the Beas Rivers where various petty chieftains had championed for secession from the Empire. Kashmir had been broken away and sold to a Hindu noble at Ranjit Singh’s court, Raja Gulab Singh, for one million pounds sterling. The British had levied a fine on the Punjab upon defeating them; they could not pay it, and so Kashmir was sold. The lands north of Jalandar Doab, including Lahore and up to Peshawar, still belonged to the boy king, Maharajah Dalip Singh.

  Two guards came to attention and slapped at their rifles in salute. Henry nodded to them. As he ducked through the low archways leading into the northwestern end of the fort, which now housed the Toshakhana, he thought it laughable to consider the child king of anything at all. They were here, weren’t they? The fort was guarded by the redcoats of the British army; Henry, John, and various others of his team occupied some of the best apartments in the fort; the Maharani had been tucked away into her little corner of the zenana. Even this section, housing the Naulakha and the Sheesh Mahal, had once been part of the zenana. Now, no longer.

  Henry went through the dark gloom of the arches and out into the blinding sunshine that seared everything around into a sharp, unrelenting white. He tugged the rim of his sola topi over his eyes and, when that didn’t suffice, shaded them with his hand and gazed around in wonder. The courtyard itself was smaller than the one in Jahangir’s Quadrangle, the space much more intimate, each of the buildings on the four sides crowding upon the center. Which was divided into four quadrants by two water channels that bisected in the middle, where a fountain whispered, drops turning into rainbows and then melting away. But unlike the other courtyards, there was no grass here, just yellow, black, and white stones laid out in a repeating pattern.

  The Naulakha, on his left, had a curved roof in white marble, and through its double-cusped archways Henry could see the thin marble latticework screens that kept prying eyes out and let light in for the ladies of the harem. Sometime in the mid-1600s, Emperor Shah Jahan had built this pavilion and spent nine lakhs, nine hundred thousand rupees, on it—hence its name, Nau-lakha. But then Shah Jahan had also spent five million rupees on the Taj Mahal, and a hundred and twenty million rupees on his Peacock Throne, and he had six other thrones he could sit upon. The Kohinoor diamond, in the Toshakhana of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, had once adorned the iridescent breast of the main peacock on Shah Jahan’s throne. Ranjit Singh had taken Lahore, and along with it Shah Jahan’s fort, and then he had taken the Kohinoor diamond. Now, Henry was here, in possession of the fort, and soon to be in possession of the diamond.

  Henry turned to the building opposite him, the Sheesh Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors. From the outside, it was very simple, with its arches and its unblemished, unadorned marble—almost disappointing—but he knew that the inside would exceed every tale he had heard about it. Two months ago, when Henry had first come to Lahore, he had had this entire courtyard boarded up and locked, and stationed a twenty-four-hour-guard outside. He had ordered heavy wooden doors fitted onto the archways of the Sheesh Mahal and secured these with large locks, until he had the time to inventory its contents.

  Against all wisdom, he gave the keys to the man who stood in front of the Sheesh Mahal, the keys looped around an iron ring which hung from his cummerbund. As Henry walked toward him, his feet kicked up dust in a fine plume that set him coughing. And in that dust were the smaller footprints of the man—the only ones leading to the doorway of the Sheesh Mahal, clearly made just a few minutes before. He had been right, Henry thought, in giving Misr Makraj the keys.

  Misr Makraj had been treasurer to Maharajah Ranjit Singh for thirty-five years, an honored servant in whose hands, literally, had rested the vast wealth of the Punjab Empire. He was a short man, small in frame, his skin a rich mahogany. His hair was all white, cut down to stubble on his head. In his thin face, his chin jutted out, his cheeks sank in, and his eyes were clouded with the beginnings of cataracts, but his skin was smooth, unlined, belying his seventy-odd years. He was dressed as meticulously as Henry had always seen him. His hands and nails were clean, manicured. His dhoti was a splendid affair in lustrous white cotton, looped between his legs to tuck in at the back, its folds ironed and neat, falling down to his ankles with a row of pleats in front. His feet were bare; Misr Makraj had never entered the Toshakhana with the soil of the outside streets upon his feet. He wore a white cotton kurta, unembroidered and plain; in his ears were two gold rings, and on the ring finger of his right hand was a thick gold ring emblazoned with the seal of Maharajah Ranjit Singh.

  “You are early, Henry Sahib,” Misr Makraj said in Persian as he neared.

  “So are you, Misr Makraj,” Henry replied in the same language, reaching out a hand to the man. He found his grasped between Misr Makraj’s two hands as he bowed. The treasurer’s hands were shaking, Henry realized, and he put his other hand over their clasp. Behind Henry, the two clerks he had brought along with him snorted. It wouldn’t do to shake the hands of the natives, that was what they thought. These were the Howard brothers, themselves thin men with shrunken faces and skin that had never taken the brown hues of an Indian sun, because they spent all of their time indoors in the service of the East India Company.

  “It has to be done, you know,” Henry said gently.

  “Yes, this is true,” Misr Makraj said shakily. “I had thought it would be the Maharajah Dalip Singh who would ask me for an accounting . . . not . . .” He reached for the keys, chose one, and slid it into the lock. “But I would rather it be you than anyone else, Henry Sahib.”

  “Thank you,” Henry said.

  The lock took a while to yield. The monsoon rains had come all through the months of July and August, and turned the fields around the fort into a lavish green almost overnight. Humidity hung in the air like a smothering veil, crept into lungs, created mold and mildew. Every piece of metal grew a film of rust; even the edges of mirrors were dusted brown. The lock had rusted, and as Misr Makraj struggled to turn the key, Henry had all the proof he needed that he had selected the guardian of the Toshakhana well, much as the Maharajah had for thirty-five years.

  Herbert Edwardes, Henry’s private secretary, had balked at his choice, and had brought John along to strengthen his argument as Henry worked over some papers one night by the light of a flickering candle. Rain had pounded down on the roof of the stone pavilion, the pond which housed the fountain had overflowed, and water had spilled merrily out of the shallow channels that bisected the yard outside.

  “It’s not right. How can Misr Makraj be trusted?” Edwardes had said.

  “How can he not?” Henry had asked. “After all, it’s a job he knows well and has done for a great many years.”

  “Henry”—this from John—“give me the keys, or Edwardes, or someone else. We’ll keep it safe. Why this man, who has no master, and no allegiance to us. How are we going to explain this to Lord Hardinge?”

  “I’ll explain it,” Henry had said. “In fact”—he had pointed at the paper on his desk—“I’m in the process of doing so, and cannot finish if you keep up this chatter. H
ardinge made me Resident for a reason.” He’d looked at their grim faces and sighed. “You must understand our position here. We are in the place of conquerors, have put their child king on the throne, but keep a hard hand upon his shoulder. We can topple him when we want. The people know this; they don’t trust us. This . . . gesture of giving the keys to an old retainer of the Maharajah will go a long way, some way at least, toward building trust. You must see this.”

  They had remained stubborn, severe, unconvinced. “He can have no allegiance to us,” John had said again. “Only to his master.”

  “His master is dead,” Henry had replied. And we are now his masters. This, he had left unsaid, and watched them walk out into the rain, their shoulders stooped with dissatisfaction. But on this point, Henry himself would not yield. What would have happened if Misr Makraj had vanished with a part of, or the whole of the Toshakhana, Henry had not wanted to think about. It would have been the end of his career; it would have been the end of India for him.

  Now, as the lock fell open under Misr Makraj’s aged hands, Henry knew he had done right. The treasurer pushed open the doors, leaning against them when the hinges, as much rusted as the lock had been, creaked and protested.